The Eclipse Viewer – Episode 67 – Abbas Kiarostami: Early Shorts and Features [Part 4]

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:12:00 — 102.8MB)

This podcast focuses on the Eclipse Series, box set editions of lost, forgotten, or overshadowed films recently revived by the Criterion Collection. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each set and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this last of four episodes, David and Trevor discuss six “School Films” (Two Solutions for One Problem, So Can I, Tribute to Teachers, Toothache, Orderly or Disorderly, and Homework) from Eclipse Series 47: Abbas Kiarostami – Early Shorts and Features. Eleven other films included in this set are covered in earlier episodes.

About the films:

Long before he became one of the most renowned artists in world cinema, the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami began his cinematic career at Tehran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (a.k.a. Kanoon), where he honed his distinctive style and themes. During his first decades as a filmmaker, Kiarostami moved freely among documentary, narrative, and even animation, and between joyous short films made for children and subtle works exploring the struggles of adolescents. Often using the classroom as a laboratory, he probed social and political tensions in Iranian society during the turbulent years before and after the 1979 revolution. Spanning his very first short, Bread and Alley (which the director called the “mother of all my films”); other underseen early revelations, like Experience and The Traveler; and nonfiction masterpieces such as Homework, the graceful, warm, and playful works collected here find moments of transcendent poetry within everyday life, and use deceptively simple premises to express universal truths about the human condition.

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Episode Links

Part 1: Beginnings and Journeys (featuring Colors, Bread and Alley, Breaktime, and The Traveler)
Part 2: Adolescence and Poverty (featuring Experience and A Wedding Suit)
Part 3: Political Allegories (featuring Solution No. 1, First Case, Second Case, The Chorus, Fellow Citizen, and First Graders)

Abbas Kiarostami

• The Criterion Collection
• The Criterion Channel
• Abbas Kiarostami’s Childhood Films (Criterion Channel documentary short, suggested viewing mentioned on inside cover of the set)
• Wikipedia
• Letterboxd
• Kiarostami Foundation
• The American Scholar
• British Journal of Photography
• Harper’s
• Henna Platform
• The Point
• Senses of Cinema
• ShotDeck
• Sight & Sound
• Mania Akbari Tells Her Story
• Criterion – In Memoriam

Box Set Reviews

• Blu-ray.com
• Home Theater Forum
• Let’s Talk Criterion (video)
• Under the Radar

Two Solutions for One Problem (1975)

• The Criterion Collection
• The Criterion Channel
• Wikipedia
• Letterboxd
• Kiarostami Foundation
• Cagey Films
• Cinephilic Musings
• The Cultural Me
• Webs of Significance

So Can I (1975)

• The Criterion Collection
• The Criterion Channel
• Wikipedia
• Letterboxd
• Kiarostami Foundation

Tribute to Teachers (1977)

• The Criterion Collection
• The Criterion Channel
• Letterboxd
• Kiarostami Foundation
• Webs of Significance

Toothache (1980)

• The Criterion Collection
• The Criterion Channel
• Wikipedia
• Letterboxd
• Kiarostami Foundation

Orderly or Disorderly (1981)

• The Criterion Collection
• The Criterion Channel
• Wikipedia
• Letterboxd
• Cagey Films
• Kiarostami Foundation

Homework (1989)

• The Criterion Collection
• The Criterion Channel
• Wikipedia
• Letterboxd
• Kiarostami Foundation
• Errata (podcast)
• Senses of Cinema

Contact us

• David Blakeslee ( TikTok / YouTube / Facebook / CriterionCast / Blog )
• Trevor Berrett ( Instagram / Website / The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast )